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The development of antiseptics * At the beginning of the nineteenth century most doctors believed blood poisoning was spread by a " poisonous miasma" that was present in the hospital wards. * a) Ignaz Semmelweiss, a Hungarian doctor, believed that surgeons carried the infection, which caused puerperal fever around ,when they moved from a ward to another, without disinfecting their hands or their operating tools. b) To prevent the spread of the infection, he made all the surgeons working under his supervision wash their hands in calcium chloride (weak disinfectant). c) His discovery was very successful. The deaths caused by puerperal fever, as a consequence of childbirth, dropped from 12% to 1%. Although this dramatic improvement, doctors still supported the local belief, which considered poisonous miasma the cause of infections, and gave no importance to Semmelweiss's discoveries. A possible reasoning for this behaviour can be attributed to the fact that Semmelweiss came from Hungary,...

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